This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, college readiness, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues with additional focus at the national level.

What Do We Measure and Why? Questions About The Uses of MeasurementJournal for Strategic Performance Measurement, June 1999
Margaret Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers

And still they come, new from those
nations to which the study of that
which can be weighed and measured
is a consuming love.
W.H. Auden

We live in a culture that is crazy about numbers. We seek
standardization, we revere precision, and we aspire for control. The
very ancient and dominant belief of Western culture is that numbers are
what is real. If you can number it, you make it real. Once made real,
it's yours to manage and control. We increasingly depend on numbers to
know how we are doing for virtually everything. We ascertain our health
with numbers. How many calories or grams should I eat? What's my
cholesterol reading? We assess one another with numbers. What's your
I.Q.? What's your GPA? Your Emotional Intelligence? And of course we
judge organizational viability only with numbers. What's the customer
satisfaction rating? Inventory turns? ROI? P/E ratio?

It is numbers and only numbers that define and make visible what
is real. This is the "hard stuff," the real world of management- graphs,
charts, indices, ratios. Everyone knows that "you can only manage what
you can measure." The work of modern managers is to interpret and
manipulate these numeric views of reality. The desire to be good
managers has compelled many people to become earnest students of
measurement. But are measures and numbers the right pursuit? Do the
right measures make for better managers? Do they make for stellar
organizations?

As we look into the future of measurement, we want to pause for a
moment and question this number mania. We'd like you to consider this
question. What are the problems in organizations for which we assume
measures are the solution?

Assumedly, most managers want reliable, high quality work. They
want commitment, focus, teamwork, learning, and quality. They want
people to pay attention to those things that contribute to performance.

If you agree that these are the general attributes and behaviors
you're seeking, we'd like to ask whether, in your experience, you have
been able to find measures that sustain these strong and important behaviors over time. Or if you haven't succeeded at finding them yet, are you still hopeful that you will find the right measures? Do you still believe in the power of measures to elicit these performance qualities?

We believe that these behaviors are never produced by measurement.
They are performance capabilities that emerge as people feel connected
to their work and to each other. They are capacities that emerge as
colleagues develop a shared sense of what they hope to create together,
and as they operate in an environment where everyone feels welcome to
contribute to that shared hope. Each of these qualities and
behaviors-commitment, focus, teamwork, learning, quality--is a choice
that people make. Depending on how connected they feel to the
organization or team, they choose to pay attention, to take
responsibility, to innovate, to learn and share their learnings. People
can't be punished or paid into these behaviors. Either they are
contributed or withheld by individuals as they choose whether and how they will work with us.

But to look at prevailing organizational practice, most managers
seem consistently to choose measurement as the route to these
capacities. They agonize to find the right reward that can be tied to
the right measure. How long has been the search for the rewards that
will lead to better teamwork or to more innovation? And haven't we yet
learned that any measure or reward only works as an incentive in the
short term, if at all. Ironically, the longer we try to garner these
behaviors through measurement and reward, the more damage we do to the
quality of our relationships, and the more we trivialize the meaning of
work. Far too many organizations have lost the path to quality because
they have burdened themselves with unending measures. How many employees
have become experts at playing "the numbers game" to satisfy bosses
rather than becoming experts at their jobs? The path of measurement can
lead us dangerously far from the organizational qualities and behaviors
that we require.

But measurement is critical. It can provide something that
is essential to sustenance and growth: feedback. All life thrives on
feedback and dies without it. We have to know what is going on around
us, how our actions impact others, how the environment is changing, how
we're changing. If we don't have access to this kind of information, we
can't adapt or grow. Without feedback, we shrivel into routines and
develop hard shells that keep newness out. We don't survive for long.

In any living system, feedback differs from measurement in several significant ways:

1. Feedback is self-generated. An individual
or system notices whatever they determine is important for them. They
ignore everything else.

2. Feedback depends on context. The critical information is being
generated right now. Failing to notice the "now," or staying stuck in
past assumptions, is very dangerous.

3. Feedback changes. What an individual or system chooses to
notice will change depending on the past, the present, and the future.
Looking for information only within rigid categories leads to blindness,
which is also dangerous.

4. New and surprising information can get in. The boundaries are permeable.

5. Feedback is life-sustaining. It provides essential information
about how to maintain one's existence. It also indicates when
adaptation and growth are necessary.

As we reflect on the capacities that feedback can provide, it
seems we are seeking many similar attributes in our organizations. But
we haven't replicated the same processes, and therefore we can't achieve
the same outcomes. There are some critical distinctions between
feedback and measurement, as evident in the following contrasts.

Some Important Distinctions

Feedback

Measurement

Context dependent

One size fits all

Self-determined; the system choose what to notice

Imposed. Criteria are established externally.

Information accepted from anywhere

Information in fixed categories only

System creates own meaning

Meaning is pre-determined

Newness, surprise are essential

Prediction, routine are valued

Focus on adaptability and growth

Focus on stability and control

Meaning evolves

Meaning remains static

System co-adapts

System adapts to the measures

If we understand the critical role played by feedback in living
systems, and contemplate these distinctions, we could develop
measurement processes that support the behaviors and capacities we
require, those that enhance the vitality and adaptability of the
organization. To create measures that more resemble feedback, we suggest
the following questions. We use them as design criteria for any measure
or measurement process:

Who gets to create the measures? Measures are meaningful
and important only when generated by those doing the work. Any group can
benefit from others' experience and from experts, but the final
measures need to be their creation. People only support what they
create, and those closest to the work know a great deal about what is
significant to measure.

How will we measure our measures? How can we keep measures
useful and current? What will indicate that they are now obsolete? How
will we keep abreast of changes in context that warrant new measures?
Who will look for the unintended consequences that accompany any process
and feed that information back to us?
Are we designing measures that are permeable rather than rigid?
Are they open enough? Do they invite in newness and surprise? Do they
encourage people to look in new places, or to see with new eyes?

Will these measures create information that increases our capacity to develop, to grow into the purpose of this organization?
Will this particular information help individuals, teams, and the
entire organization grow in the right direction? Will this information
help us to deepen and expand the meaning of our work?

What measures will inform us about critical capacities: commitment, learning, teamwork, quality and innovation?
How will we measure these essential behaviors without destroying them
through the assessment process? Do these measures honor and support the
relationships and meaning-rich environments that give rise to these
behaviors?

If these questions seem daunting, we assure you they are not
difficult to implement. But they do require extraordinary levels of
participation-defining and using measures becomes everyone's
responsibility. We've known teams, manufacturing plants, and service
organizations where everyone knew that measurement was critical to their
success, and went at the task of measuring with great enthusiasm and
creativity. They were aggressive about seeking information from anywhere
that might contribute to those purposes they had defined as most
important to their organization, such things as safety, team-based
organization, or social responsibility. Their process was creative,
experimental, and the measures they developed were often
non-traditional. People stretched and struggled to find ways to measure
qualitative aspects of work. They developed unique and complex
multivariate formulas that would work for a while and then be replaced
by new ones. They understood that the right measurements gave them
access to the information they needed to prosper and grow. But what was
"right" kept changing. And in contrast to most organizations,
measurement felt alive and vital in these work environments. It wasn't a
constraint or deadening weight; rather it helped people accomplish what
they wanted to accomplish. It provided feedback, the information
necessary for them to adapt and thrive.

Being in these workplaces, we also learned that measurement needs
to serve the deepest purposes of work. It is only when we connect at the
level of purpose that we willingly offer ourselves to the organization.
When we have connected to the possibilities of what we might create
together, then we want to gather information that will help us be better
contributors.

But in too many organizations, just the reverse happens. The
measures define what is meaningful rather than letting the greater
meaning of the work define the measures. As the focus narrows, people
disconnect from any larger purpose, and only do what is required of
them. They become focused on meeting the petty requirements of
measurement, and eventually, they die on the job. They have been cut off
from the deep well-springs of purpose which are the source of the
motivation to do good work.

If we look closely at our experience of the past few years, it is
clear that as a management culture, we have succeeded at developing
finer and more sophisticated measures. But has this sophistication at
managing by the numbers led to the levels of performance or commitment
we've been seeking? And if we have achieved good results in these areas,
was it because we discovered the right measures, or was something else
going on in the life of the organization?

We would like to dethrone measurement from its godly position, to
reveal the false god it has been. We want instead to offer measurement a
new job--that of helpful servant. We want to use measurement to give us
the kind and quality of feedback that supports and welcomes people to
step forward with their desire to contribute, to learn, and to achieve.
We want measurement to be used from a deeper place of understanding, the
understanding that the real capacity of an organization arises when
colleagues willingly struggle together in a common work that they love.

______________________________________________

Bio

Margaret Wheatley is a well-respected writer,
speaker, and teacher for how we can accomplish our work, sustain our
relationships, and willingly step forward to serve in this troubling
time. She has written six books: Walk Out Walk On (with Deborah Frieze, 2011); Perseverance (2010); Leadership and the New Science; Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future; A Simpler Way (with Myron Rogers); and Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time.
Each of her books has been translated into several languages;
Leadership and the New Science appears in 18 languages. She is
co-founder and President emerita of The Berkana Institute, which works
in partnership with a rich diversity of people and communities around
the world, especially in the Global South. These communities find their
health and resilience by discovering the wisdom and wealth already
present in their people, traditions and environment (www.berkana.org).
Wheatley received her doctorate in Organizational Behavior and Change
from Harvard University, and a Masters in Media Ecology from New York
University. She's been an organizational consultant since 1973, a global
citizen since her youth, a professor in two graduate business programs,
a prolific writer, and a happy mother and grandmother. She has received
numerous awards and honorary doctorates. You may read her complete bio
at http://margaretwheatley.com/bio.html, and may download any of her many articles (free) at http://margaretwheatley.com/writing.html.

I recently wrote what I taught for years, that is that U. S. history textbooks are written in black and white perspectives from the East Coast point of view. The multi-cultural, multi-lingual essence of Texas and the U. S. Southwest is at best overlooked if not belittled. Moreover, the textbooks are male oriented and the role of the woman and ethnic minorities are ignored. In a patronizing manner, women who excelled in politics, business, arts and entertainment are given short biographical sketches ignoring the fact they are the exception and not the norm. I first faced this contradiction in 1971 – 76 when serving as the first Ethnic Studies Director and instructor at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio. As Department Head I informed the administration I wanted to hire a woman to teach a course on The Woman. The Sisters of Divine Providence told me I could not do that as “the woman is not a minority”. I was terribly upset (to say the least and being politically correct) as I did not expect that from nuns. Much to their chagrin, I got around the issue by posting a class on The Woman to be taught by me under “Special Topics”. On the side, I hired Ms. Lupe Anguiano to teach the class. Hence, I opened each session, took roll, attended class and paid her salary from my paycheck. Times have changed and the role of the woman in history, culture and the family has gotten academic acceptance but still excluded in the textbooks. I also used to tell my students that the teaching and writing of history was not limited to memorizing names, dates and events. To study and write history one must look at the totality of human-social-scientific, linguistic and cultural evolution. Ideally, a historian is nothing more than a reporter of past events. Unfortunately, the role of the woman in history, anthropology and sociology is lacking. This is even more evident in the lack of studies and writings regarding the woman on the Frontier (meaning West of the Mississippi River). Yet, then and now the woman is a child’s first doctor, teacher, provider, peace-keeper, financial manager and keeper of the Faith and culture. Take the nomadic hunter-gather Native American culture of South Texas. The men were the hunters, priests, warriors and frequently, but not always, the “medicine men”. The women were the gatherers, weavers, seamstresses, nurses, and misleading, all-encompassing “keepers of the home” a phrase that minimizes their role as organizers and preservers of the home and family. The woman in the Spanish Colonial, Mexican and early U. S. historical periods of South Texas and New Mexico were all of the above plus, gardeners of fruits, vegetables and herbs (i.e. medicinal and spices), took care of a family’s domestic live stock (milk cows, goats, chicken, etc), doctor-nurse-midwife-curandera (herb healer), and the unpaid, unappreciated laborer. The frontier woman had to ride a horse, fire a weapon and defend the home-ranch-farm with or without a husband or mate around. If a widow, she had to do all the

above plus raise a family. The frontier woman and many today are still the keepers of the Faith and culture as many men step aside when it comes to religious instruction and participation as husbands silently delegate that responsibility to the wife and mother of their children. The woman then and nowwas and remains the key element in regard to the culture of the home. Today, however, a woman’s education, and socio-economic status of the family unit, has a great impact on what she bequeaths and passes on to her children. Not to be ignored or over-looked, the religious affiliation of the family unit today also impacts on the role of the woman. As to the social role and expectation of the woman, it is interesting to note that up to the 19th Century, women usually married by 12 years of age. Empress Carlota of Mexico (wife of Emperor Maximillian) introduced the quinceanera through which young ladies were presented to society ready to marry at 15 years of age. The U.S. followed the 19th century European tradition of introducing young ladies at 16 years of age. The coming of age debutant balls introducing young ladies to society varied thereafter but never exceeding 21 years of age.Today the quinceanera, “sweet sixteen ball” and debutant ball are no longer seen as presenting daughters for marriage but rather merely a coming of ageparty-social gathering-celebration. Yet the role of the wife-mother has remained practically unchanged and unappreciated. As a sidebar, I personally am fed-up with hearing and reading the same old articles and seeing the Casasola photographs of the women soldiers (soldaderas) and “Adelitas” of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Tell me about General Carmen Reyes. What was her background, family life, battles won and lost and accomplishments before, during and after the revolution? How does she compare to Joan of Arc? Also, how does the generala compare to her contemporary rebel leaders? Why is she still an unknown a century after the fact? The Mexican Revolution is not my area of expertise but if it was I would not hesitate digging into the Archivo de la Defensa in Mexico City as well as the history and archives of the revolution in Michoacan and Jalisco. The same applies to Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz. Yes she was a great writer-poetess and I have enjoyed and still enjoy her literary output. However, she was a num leading a shelter, cloistered life exposed only to the elite upper socio-economic circles of Mexico City during her life. She never married, never had or raised children, never had a husband or had to deal with neighbors (other than her fellow sheltered nuns). She does not represent or present the woman of her lifetime. So how did her worldview compare to that of Maria del Carmen Calvillo ranch owner-manager-cattle baroness of Bexar in the early 1800’s? Nuf zed as I hope I got some of you angry enough to do something about the unappreciated role of women in history.

Okay, isn't there something wrong with this picture? TFA's Wendy Kopp and James G. Cibulka, president of the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) were on the panel advising with Cibulka trying to get the group to consensus.

Check this out (from within):

It should also be noted that Cibulka had several institutional
negotiators at the table who will be coming before his organization for
re-accreditation within the next several months.The negotiations frustrated some of the people involved — and some who weren’t invited.

“The Department of Education’s attempt to make sweeping higher
education policy changes in 7 ½ days of negotiations, and ultimately, to
make regulations via conference call makes a train wreck look
well-planned,” said Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for
government relations of the American Council on Education."

This is an important read for higher education, too:

And now, the Education Department has higher ed in its sights.

Department officials put together a group of several dozen people to
“negotiate” on proposed regulations on colleges of education, which
have come under scrutiny as the issue of “teacher quality” has become front and center in the school reform movement.

The Obama administration wants to expand the use of
standardized test scores as an accountability tool from K-12 into higher
education.

The Education Department just tried — and failed — to persuade a
group of negotiators to agree to regulations that would rate colleges of
education in large part on how K-12 students being taught by their
graduates perform on standardized tests.
As part of this scheme, financial aid to students in these programs
would not be based entirely on need but, rather, would also be linked to
test scores.

The department’s plans assume that standardized test scores can reliably and validly be usedfor such accountability purposes
. Most researchers in this field say they can’t — for a number of
reasons, including the limitations of the tests themselves — and
therefore shouldn’t be used for any high stakes decision in education
anywhere. They say that making test scores so important is one of the negative consequences of the last decade of No Child Left Behind, and shouldn’t be continued.

But the Education Department thinks otherwise and has been pushing
this kind of evaluation as a centerpiece of its school reform
initiatives. In order to win federal funds, a number of states have
approved new K-12 educator assessment systems that rely heavily on these “value added” formulas — which purport to be able to ascertain the amount of “value” a teacher adds to a student achievement based on test scores.

And now, the Education Department has higher ed in its sights.

Department officials put together a group of several dozen people to
“negotiate” on proposed regulations on colleges of education, which
have come under scrutiny as the issue of “teacher quality” has become front and center in the school reform movement.

Teacher quality, of course, is important. There are teachers in
classrooms today who shouldn’t be, and there are teacher preparation
programs that should be closed. The question is how to go about
improving the situation.

Specifically department officials are proposing regulations that
would rate teacher prep programs into four tiers through a number of
measures — though heavily weighted — on standardized test scores. Only
programs in the top two tiers would be allowed to offer federally funded
teaching grants for students who agree to teach in high-poverty
schools.

Some of the negotiators turned out not to be as infatuated with the
highly controversial “value-added” assessment methods as are department
officials. They believe there are better, fairer ways to determine
quality of teachers and colleges of education.

When it became clear that some of the negotiators weren’t going to go
along with the basic outlines of the department’s plan, department
officials ended the negotiations over a conference call.
But don’t think that is the end of the effort.

Now we can expect Obama administration officials to issue regulations
doing what they want — without congressional approval, or, for that
matter, without having persuaded a group of negotiators they had
selected themselves that what they want to do makes educational sense.

It should be noted that administration officials say that there is
evidence to show that “value added” formulas can work for assessment.
Justin Hamilton, press secretary for Education Arne Duncan, said in an
email that some of the negotiators pointed to this evidence: “Louisiana,
North Carolina, Tennessee have already implemented it and their work
has been closely studied and documented.... And all the RTTT [Race to
the Top] states are in process.”

Most researchers on the subject, however, have warned strongly
against using value-added formulas for high stakes decisions of any kind
in part because there is too much variability in the results. Good
teachers can be evaluated poorly; and poor teachers can be evaluated as
effective, they say, hardly a way to go about improving the teaching
corps.

Let’s look at how this would work in another field. Take doctors.
What if they were measured by the number of patients they save — and
then the medical school where they trained gets graded on those numbers?
And to top it off, student financial aid at medical schools become
dependent on those numbers, too.

How do you think medical schools which seek to serve high need, high
risk populations would fare in comparison to medical schools that
produce doctors for the healthy and wealthy?

This point was not lost on minority-serving institutions, including
the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, who called foul
loud and clear in letters sent to the department. Other educational
organizations, including groups of deans from well-respected colleges of
education, all sent in concerns about the proposed regulations,
including:

* They are a big expansion of the federal role in assessing teacher
training programs. According to the American Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education, it is the states that have been given the authority
by statute to evaluate and penalize teacher prep programs.

* They would require states and teacher preparation programs to
report to the federal government on data that most do not currently have
the ability to collect.

* They would require states to implement assessment programs that are costly, without providing any federal funds to help.

For the negotiations, the Education Department picked the
negotiating team — and some of the selections, as well as the omissions,
are interesting.

One might assume that one organization that would be selected to
negotiate on the issue of colleges of teacher education would be the
American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. It wasn’t.
Neither was the American Council of Education, the nonprofit
organization that represents presidents and chancellors of colleges and
universities.

Who was? Among the groups selected were Teach for America, the
nonprofit organization that places new college graduates into needy
classrooms with only five weeks of training. It has been a favorite of
the Education Department, winning millions of dollars in federal grant
month. And its founder Wendy Kopp, has been lavishly praised by
Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

Also on the negotiating team was James G. Cibulka, president of the
National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). He took
on the role of trying to reach consensus on the panel, holding informal
meetings with the dissenters to try to win them over.

It should be noted that he heads the only remaining accreditor of
teacher preparation/teacher education programs (a result of a merger
between NCATE and the other specialized teacher accreditor, TEAC), and
that he will thus be coming before the Department of Education’s panel –
the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity —
in the near future. This committee confers recognition to accreditors,
and it’s rigorous scrutiny is something accreditors tend to dread
because recognition equals legitimacy, rigor, and value.

It should also be noted that Cibulka had several institutional
negotiators at the table who will be coming before his organization for
re-accreditation within the next several months.

The negotiations frustrated some of the people involved — and some who weren’t invited.
“The Department of Education’s attempt to make sweeping higher
education policy changes in 7 ½ days of negotiations, and ultimately, to
make regulations via conference call makes a train wreck look
well-planned,” said Becky Timmons, assistant vice president for
government relations of the American Council on Education.

Apart from how the negotiations were conducted, the insistence of the
department to pursue initiatives involving highly controversial
assessment methods continues to astound people who had expected
President Obama to make a sharp break from the No Child Left Behind
mentality rather than to exacerbate some of its worst effects.
-0-Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet.

‘Mr. President, public education in the U.S. is on the wrong track’

This is the text of an open letter written to President Obama by Mary Broderick, president of the Arlington, Va.,-based National School Boards Association,
a
not-for-profit organization representing state associations of school
boards and their member districts. The letter, sent earlier this month
to the president, asks for a national dialogue about the direction of
public education reform.
Here’s the text of the letter:

The night of your election, in Grant Park, you said, “I will listen
to you especially when we disagree.” We are all committed to the best
educational future for the children of America. Yet, as the nation
prepares for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary
Education Act (ESEA), school board members and top educational thinkers
overwhelming urge abandoning the current “command-and-control” federal
educational oversight. America’s treasure lies in unleashing the
creativity of our youth. Though well-intentioned, the current federal direction is ignoring and working against much
of what we know about student motivation and achievement. Instead, the
federal government should support local efforts to ignite curiosity,
creative potential, and a drive for excellence among students and staff.

Throughout my presidency of the National School Boards Association, I
have travelled to many states and written for our national journal and
asked for input to this letter. School board members and educators
across the country have contributed their thinking here. We share your
sense of urgency: We must give every child, no matter their
circumstances, the opportunity to excel. We must ensure high quality
experiences so each child develops fully. Our major disagreement comes
from how we go about this task.

We want for each American child the same things that
you and Michelle want for Sasha and Malia — inspiration, aspiration,
creativity. I know you don’t want an overemphasis on testing. I have
heard you say it. Experience in schools and communities, supported by
research, tells us that relentlessly focusing on standardized tests
erodes our national competitiveness and deadens curiosity and drive.
Clearly, we need some testing to gauge student learning, and we have no
problem with appropriate accountability. But we have swung to a far extreme that
is significantly hurting children. “Students are numbing over testing
for testing’s sake…. We can’t test this country into excellence.” (Sonny
Savoie, LA)

Other countries that traditionally focus on testing recognize the
shortcomings of their systems and come to our shores to learn how we
inspire a spirit of innovation. And decades of work by motivation
theorists, such as Daniel Pink, help us understand why a focus on
testing and standards may not cultivate the learners we want. Others
have found that such narrow focus restricts our views of what is
possible, and even causes unethical behavior, such as the rash of
testing scandals here and abroad.
By contrast, Finnish schools are
now “exemplars of many of the success indicators we … want to see in
American schools. Achievement is consistently high. Students are
self-motivated and engaged in their learning. Schools have wide latitude
to decide on their own programs, and there are no intrusive sanctions.”
(Jill Wynns, CA)

The focus on strict quantitative accountability has never worked for any organization, and it has not worked with No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
Teachers are trying to meet the mandates of those programs and
consequently “our children suffer and are not getting educated to their
individual potential.” (Carolyne Brooks, IL) Teachers’ focus on tests is
undermining their potential and initiative, making it more difficult to
share a love of learning with their students.

Our students will never be first in the world on standardized tests.
We never have come close. Nor is that something toward which we should
aspire! We simply are not a compliant people willing to absorb facts
without challenge. But we have had the most innovative workforce in the
world (and now vie with Finland for that
top position). Though intended to encourage equity, our current policy
is, in fact, driving us toward mediocrity. Our students may be becoming
better regurgitators, but what we need is excellent thinkers.

We have significant challenges in many of our communities, especially
those that are underserved, yet we continue to boast some of the best
schools in the world. We have models of excellence from which we should
all be learning. Our vision should be to empower excellence — to draw
out the best in each and every individual in our schools. We should
recognize that our children’s brains are our most important resource. We
should aspire to having children take responsibility for their own
learning. We can have a common curriculum as a guide, but leave it to
our local “civic labs,” as Thomas Jefferson envisioned them, to find
optimal ways to inspire learning.

That said, we won’t achieve any vision without significant teamwork.
Finland’s process may offer a model: They spent years developing
national consensus about the essentials for successful education and,
hence, the nation. Collaboration can promote independent thinking and
action.

As a nation, rather than inspiring people toward a vision of
excellence, we have been blaming some for blocking student achievement.
It is time to inspire all toward a pursuit of excellence for each of our
children.

The work world our children inherit will be significantly different
from the one we have known. Jobs in the 20th century were mostly
algorithmic or routine. According to McKinsey & Co., most such jobs
have already evaporated because of automation and outsourcing. Future
work will be more complex, so we had better prepare students differently
than through standardized tests.

As the nature of work changes, so too must motivators. Carrots and
sticks, which worked with routine jobs, actually impede efforts when the
work is more complex, Daniel Pink says.
Instead, the rewards of learning and challenges of the work itself must
now be the primary motivators. Adults learn best, experts say, if they
feel competent, autonomous, and a sense of belonging.

Much in our current school systems works against these, and our new
national focus on teacher evaluation will continue that trend. As a
result of ignoring innate needs, our schools too often are not
innovative hubs. Yet to meet the challenges of our future, we must
cultivate a spirit of innovation and inspiration. We will only succeed
in preparing for our future if we empower all in our schools to think
through complex problems and processes and generate solutions. Rather
than laboring over bureaucratic compliance problems, let’s engage
students and teachers (even board members!) in solving problems of
teaching and learning.

Our schools will never become great through threat or intimidation.
Schools must be safe places to take risks, where staff members and
students feel valued for their ideas and talents and empowered to fail
so that they can grow. Students will learn what they see, experience,
and enjoy.

We have the knowledge and experience to do this at the national,
state, and local levels. However, the present narrow focus on
accountability and trend of demonizing those in public education,
arrogantly focusing on “failing schools,” is diametrically opposed to
fostering excellence.

Again, we can learn from Finland: It holds teachers in high regard
(appealing to competence). Teacher training includes a strong feedback
loop; professional development is embedded in the work, through coaching
and ongoing support (appealing to belonging). People are willing to try
new approaches and ideas (appealing to autonomy).

Innovation requires investment. Retired school superintendent Jack
Reynolds noted that under the original ESEA we had a national system for
identifying, supporting, and sharing excellent, vetted educational
ideas. We should return to such a system of research, development, and
diffusion, using technology to share teaching and learning approaches.
Further, Ohio school board member Charlie Wilson suggested we encourage
and fund our universities to conduct empirical research on the
considerable experimentation that does occur in our schools.

Some board members suggested that we benefit from broad, guiding
curriculum principles. Wyoming’s David Fall encouraged you to continue
your work with the National Governors’ Association to refine core
standards. However, our children would be best served if the standards
were guides, but decision-making remained local.

Across the nation, I have heard growing support for an emphasis on
the early years. To close achievement gaps, we need to provide rich
early learning environments for children born with the least. We need to
teach their parents how to encourage their learning. Please continue to
support states’ early childhood efforts.

Mr. President, public education in the U.S. is on the wrong track. As
we have moved decision-making farther from teachers and children, we
have jeopardized our competitive edge and keys to our national success:
our ingenuity, our openness to innovation, and our creativity.

I urge you to convene a national dialogue, not made up of
politicians, but including the breadth of educational opinion, to
reconsider our educational direction. I would love to help you do this.
Let’s ensure that each child has the tools to be successful. Let’s
marshal the nation’s brain power and tap into the research, proven
practice, and demonstrated evidence of excellence.

Please bring your parent hat to determining our new direction for
public education. Your daughters, like all of our children and all of
our teachers, don’t need more tests designed to identify weaknesses.
They need excited, motivated, passionate teachers who feel challenged,
supported, and encouraged to try new approaches, who share with their
students a learning environment that is limitless. If we work
collaboratively on a shared vision of excellence, if we foster team
development, encourage innovation, and care for the growth of our
teachers, our children will lead us into the future with confidence. And
public education will remain the cornerstone of our vibrant democracy.

If you believe civil rights for Latinos have improved dramatically since the 1950s, thank a Tejano.

Thank the Tejano diaspora.

“The Tejano Diaspora” is also the title of a new book by Notre Dame scholar Marc Simon Rodriguez, an associate professor of history and law.

Rodriguez focuses on “Mexican Americanism & Ethnic Politics in
Texas and Wisconsin,” the book's subtitle. So I somewhat overstate his
case. I think, however, the extrapolation is warranted.
Rodriguez's analysis takes us to the hotbed of Chicano activism in
Crystal City, Texas, and makes the strong case that such activism was
exported to Wisconsin. But, from my reading, the template was at work
just about any place Tejanos migrated during that critical civil rights
period from the 1950s to the 1970s.

They went wherever strong backs and willing — low paid — hands were
needed to harvest crops for a hungry nation. And they brought with them a
drive to engage the institutions that governed their work and
their lives.

It's not that there weren't homegrown activists. But, because Tejanos
were in deeper holes than others, they were more practiced in
digging out.

To read “The Tejano Diaspora” is to be taken back to an unsettling
time and place in Texas when Mexican-Americans were the majority in many
small communities, but you couldn't tell that from those who worked the
levers of power.

If you want to make the case that your small Texas town was
different, the literature — untaught, I suspect, in Texas schools —
would suggest that yours was the exception to a hard Texas rule.
“The situation in Texas was more severe,” Rodriguez told me. “The demarcation lines were understood by all.”

So it was in Crystal City.

Take an ill-fated election bid in 1951.

“For Mexican Americans, this election demonstrated that the airing of
complaints about problems such as corruption, cronyism, unpaved roads,
and a lack of water, sewer and electric service in their neighborhoods
resulted in massive resistance,” Rodriguez writes.

“Los Cinco” changed that in 1963. The five and their supporters
launched a poll-tax drive to register as many Mexican-Americans
as possible.

Did you get that? A poll-tax drive. Please don't tell me that all was hunky-dory in Texas.

Mexican-Americans, the majority, took control of the city.

After the election, the five splintered. Governance was bad. It spawned La Raza Unida Party,
which also imploded. Still, even in failure, lessons were learned and
these were passed along the migrant trail to Wisconsin, where farm
workers organized and poverty programs were created to help migrants
and Latinos.

Professor Rudy Acuña is calling out fascism in America. So now what?-Angela

Moral AuthorityThe U.S. Supreme CourtLa MordidaByRodolfo F. Acuña

Direct forms of political control are easy to figure out. For a time, laws and police agencies can keep things together. However, most institutions and societies depend on social control to deceive people into thinking that they live in a democracy. They use processes that socialize them into believing that those in control have moral authority.

Belief systems exert a greater control on behavior than laws. For example, religion maintains control through laws. Nevertheless, institutions such as the Catholic Church maintain control more through their moral authority than their laws. A society does not stay together for a long period of time through the use of coercive powers alone.

Historical events such as the Black Plague in the first part of the 14th Century shook the Church’s moral authority and two centuries later the Protestant Revolt ended the hegemony of Catholicism in Europe. No one can predict what effect the Church’s pedophile scandal will have. One thing for sure is that the scandal has reduced the moral authority of the Church Fathers and their interpretation of what God wants.

In the similar vein, government has suffered a loss of moral authority. This is good and bad; one thing is for sure it is leading to a divided society. Although the number of southern states passing anti-immigrant laws has grown to over a half dozen and they are flushed with emotion, it must be remembered that California and New York alone dwarf the population numbers and wealth of the red states.

Much has been written about the growth of the Latino population and its voting power. But truth be told, Latinos are growing increasingly disaffected with government and most are cynical about its fairness.

The institution that has taken the hardest hit in the past dozen years is the Supreme Court.

To put things in perspective: when I was growing up we understood that Mexico had problems, which was obvious because we were here. My relatives talked about the political and moral corruption of the Mexican government and uttered sighs of relief that we lived in the United States.

There was racism and inequality. Yet in comparison to what was happening in Mexico or what we thought was happening there, U.S. institutions appeared to be free of corruption. This was true as long as we did not read the newspapers – the radio did not carry that kind of news.

Even when it came to the sex lives of elected officials, we believed that the Mexicans were the only ones who cheated on their wives.

That is not true today. The lives of our elected officials are soap operas. The affairs of past Mexican presidents are boring in comparison to the Anglo-American versions.

My grandfather, more cynical than the rest of the family, would often correct us about our misconceptions. He would say that the gringos always did things on a grander scale. They did not take small bribes. It was only the public officials at the bottom who were regulated.

What we did not know was that what those on the top still affected us; we just did not see it. We lived in another universe.

Thanks to cable news or better still, cable opinion, we know corruption is ubiquitous – it is at the federal, state and local levels. So much so that it seems as if all elected officials are corrupt. I would not call them whores because I don’t want to give the word a bad name.

You look at the Republican and a majority of the Democrats in Congress and they are bought – pure and simple. The entire state of Arizona has been purchased. Lady Justice is dead.

Talking to my students in general they are cynical about the courts. It was once evident that justice depended on the size of your wallet. The rich could hire rich attorneys and get away with murder. The poor especially if they were minorities were left at the whim of the court.

The Supreme Court is currently listening to arguments in Arizona’s anti-immigrant legislation. If the Court rules for Arizona the decision will give legs to every racist legislator in the nation who will repeat that it (racism) is the law of the land.

They can say whatever they want but that does not make it right or less corrupt. Only the most naive and ill-informed person would make the case that Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia, and John Roberts are not corrupt. Well documented articles prove the same. Thomas and Scalia have family members who are feeding at the corporate trough.

I do not want to call these justices partisan – it would be giving partisanship a bad name.Frankly, we are not going to be able to do much about Gore v. Bush (2000) that gave George W. the presidency. At the time we shrugged our shoulders and the Democrats rolled over. In Citizens United (2010), the Court delivered the presidency to corporate interests.

Now healthcare will probably be dismantled and the anti-immigrant legislation will be upheld. Racism will be legal in the United States.

When and if this happens the moral authority of the Court will be irreparable. The Supreme Court might as well be honest and set up shop on K Street.

I don’t want to sound cynical but the worst thing that could happen to you when I was growing up was que te vieran la cara de pendejo (literally meaning that they took you for a fool or a punk).

Six degrees of separation is the notion that everyone on earth is on average approximately six steps away from any other person. If this is so, we should accept that only one degree separates our justices from the Mexican border guard and his grubby mordida (kickback).

My grandfather was right – the border guard took five pesos. Our elected officials are higher paid (escorts). Who does more damage to democracy?

It's amazing it has taken this long for folks to get religion on this
systemic fraud and rip-off and realize what is at hand here with
Pearson. And then it's amazing after they knew, just how long it has
taken to organize around this issue. And yes, it IS about affecting somebody's bottom line. Just like ending slavery was.

Actually (spoiler alert!) I’m going to use the pineapple as a sneaky way
to introduce the topic of privatization of public education. I was
driven to this. Do you know how difficult it is to get anybody to read
about “privatization of education?” It’s hell. A pineapple, on the other
hand, is something everybody likes. It’s a symbol of hospitality. Its
juice is said to remove warts. And you really cannot beat the
talking-fruit angle.

This month, New York eighth graders took a standardized English test
that included a story called “The Hare and the Pineapple,” in which
you-know-what challenges a hare to a race. The forest animals suspect
that since the pineapple can’t move, it must have some clever scheme to
ensure victory, and they decide to root against the bunny. But when the
race begins, the pineapple just sits there. The hare wins. Then the
animals eat the pineapple. The end.

There were many complaints from the eighth graders, who had to answer
questions like: “What would have happened if the animals had decided to
cheer for the hare?” They were also supposed to decide whether the
animals ate the pineapple because they were hungry, excited, annoyed or
amused. (That part bothered me a lot. We’ve got a talking pineapple here, people. You don’t just go and devour it for having delusions of grandeur.)

Teachers, parents and education experts all chimed in. Nobody liked the
talking pineapple questions. The Daily News, which broke the story,
corralled “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings, who concluded that “the
plot details are so oddly chosen that the story seems to have been
written during a peyote trip.”

The state education commissioner, John King, announced that the
questions would not count in the official test scores. There was no
comment from the test author. That would be Pearson, the world’s largest
for-profit education business, which has a $32 million five-year
contract to produce New York standardized tests.

Now — finally — we have tumbled into my central point. We have turned
school testing into a huge corporate profit center, led by Pearson, for
whom $32 million is actually pretty small potatoes. Pearson has a
five-year testing contract with Texas that’s costing the state taxpayers
nearly half-a-billion dollars.

This is the part of education reform nobody told you about. You heard
about accountability, and choice, and innovation. But when No Child Left Behind
was passed 11 years ago, do you recall anybody mentioning that it would
provide monster profits for the private business sector?

Me neither.

It’s not just the tests. No Child Left Behind has created a system of public-funded charter schools,
a growing number of which are run by for-profit companies. Some of them
are completely online, with kids getting their lessons at home via
computer. The academic results can be abysmal, but on the plus side —
definitely no classroom crowding issues.

Pearson is just one part of the picture, albeit a part about the size of
Mount Rushmore. Its lobbyists include the guy who served as the top
White House liaison with Congress on drafting the No Child law. It has
its own nonprofit foundation that sends state education commissioners on
free trips overseas to contemplate school reform.

An American child could go to a public school run by Pearson, studying
from books produced by Pearson, while his or her progress is evaluated
by Pearson standardized tests. The only public participant in the show
would be the taxpayer.

If all else fails, the kid could always drop out and try to get a
diploma via the good old G.E.D. The General Educational Development test
program used to be operated by the nonprofit American Council on
Education, but last year the Council and Pearson announced that they
were going into a partnership to redevelop the G.E.D. — a nationally
used near-monopoly — as a profit-making enterprise.

“We’re a capitalist system, but this is worrisome,” said New York Education Commissioner King.

The Obama administration has been trying to tackle the astronomical
costs of 50 different sets of standardized tests by funding efforts by
states to develop shared models — a process you will be stunned to hear
is being denounced by conservatives like Gov. Rick Perry of Texas as “a
federal takeover of public schools.”

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has also begun giving out waivers from
the requirement that children in failing public schools be given
after-school tutoring. Idea sounded great. Hardly helped the kids at
all. But no for-profit tutoring company was left behind.

The pushback against privatization isn’t easy. We’re now in a world in
which decisions about public education involve not just parents and
children and teachers, but also big profits or losses for the private
sector. Change the tests, or the textbooks, or the charters, or even the rules for teacher certification, and you change somebody’s bottom line.

Performance standards for STAAR to be phased in

AUSTIN
–The commissioner of education today unveiled the performance standards
students must achieve to pass or excel on the State of Texas
Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR™) end-of-course tests.
“These
standards will be challenging for our students and will push academic
performance to a new level in Texas. Students who pass the STAAR
end-of-course assessments will be better prepared for success in the
next course or in postsecondary pursuits,” said Commissioner of
Education Robert Scott.

Three performance categories have been set for STAAR EOCs. The definitions for the categories are:Level III: Advanced Academic Performance*
Performance
in this category indicates that students are well prepared for the next
grade or course. They demonstrate the ability to think critically and
apply the assessed knowledge and skills in varied contexts, both
familiar and unfamiliar. Students in this category have a high
likelihood of success in the next grade or course with little or no
academic intervention.
* For Algebra II and English III,
this level of performance also indicates students are well prepared for
postsecondary success.Level II: Satisfactory Academic Performance**
Performance
in this category indicates that students are sufficiently prepared for
the next grade or course. They generally demonstrate the ability to
think critically and apply the assessed knowledge and skills in familiar
contexts. Students in this category have a reasonable likelihood of
success in the next grade or course but may need short-term, targeted
academic intervention.
** For Algebra II and English III,
this level of performance also indicates students are sufficiently
prepared for postsecondary success.Level I: Unsatisfactory Academic Performance
Performance
in this category indicates that students are inadequately prepared for
the next grade or course. They do not demonstrate a sufficient
understanding of the assessed knowledge and skills. Students in this
category are unlikely to succeed in the next grade or course without
significant, ongoing academic intervention.

As the state has done
for at least the past two testing programs – the Texas Assessment of
Academic Skills (TAAS) and the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills
(TAKS) – the passing standards will be phased in. The Level II passing
standards will be a four-year, two-step process. A two-year phase-in
will be used for Level III performance on English III reading and
writing and Algebra II only.
The phase-in approach was adopted
because of the significant increase in the rigor of the STAAR program
and because the distance between the initial and final passing standards
for Level II is generally larger than the distance between the initial
and final passing standards for TAKS.
The phase-in will provide
districts with time to adjust instruction, provide additional staff
training, and close knowledge gaps.
“We have found that a gradual
increase in standards sets realistic but challenging expectations for
our students and results in improved academic performance,” Scott said.

The
performance standards each student must achieve will be based on the
year a student takes his first end-of-course assessment.

If
students take their first STAAR EOC assessment in 2012 or 2013, they
will be held to the first set of Level II phase-in performance standards
for every assessment in that content area.

Students who take
their first STAAR EOC assessment in 2014 or 2015 will be held to the
second set of Level II phase-in performance standards.

The
final Level II performance standards will be in place for any students
who take their first STAAR EOC assessment in 2016 or later.

The
final Level III performance standards will be in place for any students
who take their first STAAR English III writing and reading and Algebra
II EOC tests in 2014 or later.

Level II standards

The
scores needed to reach the various performance levels are expressed as
scale scores. Once fully phased in, the score needed to achieve Level II
performance will be a scale score of 4000 for each of the following
assessments: Algebra I, Algebra II, geometry, biology, chemistry,
physics, world geography, world history, and United States history. The
initial phase-in standard for these tests will be 3500.

The
scale score needed to achieve a Level II performance on each of the
English I, II, and III reading and writing assessments is 2000. The
initial phase-in score is 1875.

Level III standards

The
Level III standards will not be phased in for English I and II reading
and writing, Algebra I, geometry, biology, chemistry, physics, world
geography, world history and U.S. history. The final performance
standards on these tests for Level III will range from 4333 to 4634,
depending on the assessment.
An initial phase-in score of 4080
will be required to earn a Level III performance for the Algebra II
assessment with the final Level III score set at 4411.
The
English III reading assessment will require an initial phase-in score of
2135, while the English III writing assessment will require an initial
score of 2155. The fully-implemented standards will require a score of
2356 on the English III reading test and a score of 2300 on the English
III writing test.
State law now requires students graduating in
2015 or later to earn a Level III rating on Algebra II and English III
to qualify for the state’s Distinguished Achievement Program high school
diploma.
The attached table lists the scale scores needed on all
the STAAR EOC assessments. The category called minimum refers to a
score that is below Level II but is high enough to be included in the
cumulative score students must achieve on the three assessments in each
core content area.
Texas classroom teachers and administrators,
higher education faculty, education policy experts, staff from the Texas
Education Agency and Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and
psychometricians who are experts in the development of educational
tests, worked together for four years to prepare passing standard
recommendations. Additionally, TEA and Coordinating Board staff
conducted research studies over a three-year period to link performance
on a STAAR assessment and performance on other assessments in the same
content area.
TEA expects to release the first round of STAAR EOC results in June.
Additional information about the STAAR EOC standards can be found at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/student.assessment/staar/.

Phase-in and Final Recommended Level II and Level III Standards and Minimum Scores